(first posted 12/7/2013) Okay, you might have known that the 1960 Edsel two-door hardtop shared the 1960 Ford Starliner two-door hardtop roof. But I sure didn’t. Ford only manufactured 1960 Edsels for 66 days, and in that time produced 295 two-door hardtops. So it’s not like these things were ever plentiful.

The ’60 Edsel was just a tarted-up Ford. I like the Ford’s grille but not its tail. I think the Edsel improves on that tail a little. But in what had to be a cost-saving move, the area where the Ford tail lights would have gone is plainly visible, covered by a piece of sheet metal.

Hat tip to Flickr user wainohg for posting these photos, which are credited to eBay.

No Mercury version. This was the last year Mercury had a totally different platform from Ford. Mercury had two coupe designs of its own, one a hardtop coupe with a bodacious wraparound rear window, almost a twin to the windshield, and the other a post coupe with a little roof extension over the rear window (sort of like the GM flattop sedans, but more awkward), and different wraparound glass.

I think the ’60 Edsel is a great design especially considering it was done on a shoestring. If Ford had started the Edsel brand here, and just positioned it as a Pontiac competitor, without all the mission-creep of the four-model ’58 line, I think they could have had a chance.

Although I don’t recall ever seeing one, I knew what you meant by ” post coupe with a little roof extension over the rear window (sort of like the GM flattop sedans, but more awkward)” What surprises me is that Mercury had it’s own platform. I always thought Mercury/Ford/Edsel shared the same one.

Mercury had its own body, distinct from Ford’s, from 1957 to 1960. I don’t think it was completely unrelated to Ford’s, but more along the lines of the relationship between the GM A- (pre-1959), B- and C-bodies. The separate Mercury body was introduced as part of the program to move Mercury upmarket and slot Edsel in beneath it. Edsel initially used the Ford body for its lower-line models and the Mercury body for its upper-line models, but the Mercury-based Edsels were dropped after the first year, and all 1959-60 Edsels were built off of the Ford body. When the whole Edsel/Mercury experiment failed and Mercury was moved back downmarket in 1961, the full-size Mercurys went back to using the Ford body.

RobertS

Posted December 7, 2013 at 2:50 PM

The initial Edsel positioning was truly bizarre. The Ford-based Ranger and Pacer were priced between Ford and Mercury, while the Mercury-based Corsair and Citation were priced between Mercury and Lincoln. Ford had only one medium priced line compared to GM (Pontiac/Olds/Buick) and Chrysler (Dodge/DeSoto/Chrysler), so the thinking was to bridge Mercury with one brand from above and below.
Of course why buy a low-level Edsel when a Mercury was just a little bit more – and why pay more for an Edsel than you would for a Mercury, especially since, as noted, the reason Mercury got its own body was to move upscale…

jpcavanaugh

Posted December 7, 2013 at 4:29 PM

It got more convoluted for 59 when the Ford took over the 57-58 Mercury body.

gottacook

Posted August 2, 2017 at 1:02 PM

When Mercury went back to using the Ford body, at what point did the Mercury gain the extra wheelbase stretch versus the Ford? Not until the 1965 models, or earlier? (I do know that the wheelbase difference disappeared with the new 1979 cars.)

hubba

Posted August 2, 2017 at 8:39 PM

The 59 Ford was more like the Mercury, but not the same body or chassis.

It was the original ‘horse collar’ grille in ’58, more than anything, that earned the first Edsel a homely tag. With regards to styling at least. Beyond it’s quality and market niche failings. Styling was more Ford (and Pontiac) like for 1960.

I’m a fan as well. When I was a car-struck teen, a friend of the family had two 1960 Edsel coupes and a 1960 Country Squire in his back yard (along with various Corvairs, two Kaiser Manhattans, and a showroom immaculate ’68 Olds Cutlass). They were too little, too late, but they are attractive cars.

This friend, by the way, restored cars from his wheel chair. Were he still living, he’d have made a great interview on Hemmings. The Kaiser was a show-stopper and winner.

The website doesn’t appear to be updated very often and a fair number of links have become disconnected over the years. However, I can often get back into the website and into the seemingly disconnected links by googling a specific year and make of car, sometimes adding a model name.

I kind of like it. My new car dollar would have gone elsewhere in 1960, but it is a pretty good looking car. Apparently when Ford pulled the pin on the Edsel brand they offered coupons to purchasers of 1960 Edsels for a couple hundred dollars off a new Ford product on their next purchase. This was to offset the drastic resale value drop caused by cancelling the brand. The first ever factory rebate?
I vaguely recall seeing a story from just a few years ago of someone redeeming a 50 year old coupon at their local Ford store.

The rear flanks and fins of the Edsel are certainly okay, and ‘almost’ the rest of the vehicle is the best of anything Ford made in 1960. If this had been the introductory Edsel, the division might have lasted more than three years.

Where they dropped the ball is with those goofy, upright, oblong taillights. Surely, they could have come up with something better, say, a full-width bar replacing the lower deck filler panel where the Ford taillights would have been.

–In the U.S., Ford set Edsel up with its own dealer network. In Canada, Edsels were sold by Ford dealers.

–In the 1950s, Canadian Mercury dealers sold a badge-engineered Ford called the Meteor, and Canadian Ford dealers sold a badge-engineered Mercury called the Monarch. These cars existed so that each dealer network could cover the entire low- to medium-priced spectrum (GM’s and Chrysler’s Canadian dealer networks were set up similarly). When the Edsel was first introduced, Ford of Canada decided that it didn’t make sense for Ford dealers to sell both Monarchs and Edsels, so the Monarch was dropped for 1958. After the Edsel sold so poorly, however, the Monarch was brought back in 1959, and outsold the Edsel by a wide margin.

–In those days, due to import tariffs between the two countries, most cars sold in Canada by U.S.-based manufacturers were built in Canada, although it wasn’t unheard of for low-volume models (especially more expensive models where the costs of the tariff could be more easily absorbed) to be imported from the U.S. In Edsel’s case, convertibles, station wagons, and the 1958 upper-line models that shared their body with Mercury were imported from the U.S. At the end of the 1959 model year, Ford of Canada decided that it didn’t make sense to continue building any Edsels in Canada (the vast majority of customers in Canadian Ford dealerships in 1959 looking for a car in the Edsel’s price range bought either a Monarch or the new Ford Galaxie), so all 1960 Edsels sold in Canada were imported from the U.S.

If I get it right, Ford of Canada split their single dealerships into separate Ford and Mercury divisions after WW2. But then they had to create the Meteor (a Mercury-badged Ford) so its Mercury dealers would have a car in the more popular lower price field.

But then they also created the Monarch (a Ford-badged Mercury) to give its Ford dealers a car in the medium price field!

All this in a country with about 13m people spread out over 5 time zones – no wonder our cars cost so much more 🙂

Cars cost lots in Canada in those days. It was natural to have higher costs due to economy of scale and transportation costs. With the tariffs in place, the American car makers were shielded by high tariffs that were supposed to foster Canadian industry. It obviously didn’t and most of the parts that were used to make cars in Canada came in duty-free anyway since the were to go to Canadian assembly plants. The Auto Pact ended all this nonsense and helped a lot with industry integration between the two countries.

Not only were cars much more expensive than in the USA, they didn’t last as long, either. The cars of the 50’s and (to a lesser extent) 60’s were not long lasting units in Canada’s climate. Five years was ancient and loads of people nursed rust-buckets along that should not have been on the road. The long and the short of it was the Canadian consumer was getting very badly treated and the Auto Pact went a long way improve the situation.

I may add that there were loads of Monarchs and Meteors around when I was a kid but the were all done after 5-8 years, rust would destroy them. I had a friend who had a 1968 Meteor with the slant back rear window. I was so disappointed when I found out the back window didn’t roll down!

MadHungarian

Posted December 7, 2013 at 9:17 PM

Thanks for posting the ’61 Meteor, Paul. Although I know there is no evidence of this, I’ve always thought the ’61 Meteor looks like it started out as a design study for a ’61 Edsel. The rear, especially, looks exactly like what you would do if asked to create an Edsel off the ’61 Ford design. In front, all you would need is to add a central styling element to the grille much like the one on the production ’60 Edsel.

johnh875

Posted December 10, 2013 at 5:12 AM

Would that Meteor beat the Oldsmobiles for the most widely-spaced quad headlights ever?

Bill Prince

Posted August 2, 2017 at 7:50 PM

I have to say that the 1961 Meteor tail lights are some of the best looking ever. As cool looking as the 1961 Fords tail lights were, I think the Meteor is perhaps even cooler – like a 3 in 1 AMT model. Normally, designers have a hard row to hoe and don’t get it right when trying to modify a cars looks to make it into another model on a shoe string budget, but the exception is the 1961 Meteor.

The 1960 Meteor Starliner had a very nice grille and side trim, maybe also nicer than the 1961 Ford Starliner. I can not say that about any other year of the Meteor, which usually was over done and just not an improvement on the Ford to say the least.

I have always found Edsels to be intriguing cars, and this ’60 model is actually fairly attractive, the Comet taillights notwithstanding. Too bad it didn’t survive beyond those first 66 days. I ran across a four-door version of the ’60 Edsel recently here in Palm Springs, sitting in the parking lot at a local car show. Obviously a daily driver, it caught my attention immediately, those taillights are unmistakable.

I remember seeing one or two 1960 Edsels when I was a kid; I knew they were rare. But I don’t remember seeing one like this. I really like it. Like some others here, I wonder “What if they started with this?”.

Many years ago I had a ’60 Ranger convertible in a gorgeous medium green. I also had a ’59 Bonneville convert, in nearly the same shade of green. They looked like they could have come from the same company. My Edsel was a good driver, though not as powerful as my ’58 Citation convert (black with red coves and white top and matching interior) It had the 410 engine, with full power equipment as did the ’60. Also later had ’60-’61 Ford converts that drove as the Edsel did. I liked the entire ’60’s styling.

A great-uncle of mine (I had a bunch of them) bought two brand-new Edsel’s. I have no clue about model years, but I would assume a ’58 and a ’60 given his frequency of trading. Nobody around now knows what years they were.

This particular uncle (an older brother to Donald, who owned my ’63 Galaxie, and a younger brother to my grandfather Shafer) was the most affluent of the five brothers and he later developed a real affinity for full-sized Mercury’s. He also owned the ’74 Ranchero I would later come to acquire; I had mentioned it earlier this week.

His name was Leland but he always went by “Chief” – even to his two sons. Poor circulation led to his having a leg amputated in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s; he always made jokes about his leg loss. Of course, he never wore his prosthetic, so to a very young child, seeing someone on crutches with one pants leg swinging in the breeze was rather novel.

One of the weirder stories I heard him tell was about getting a flat on the Ranchero when it was loaded with pumpkins. He would run bias ply tires until they didn’t hold air, and one of them gave up when he was with another brother coming back from the patch. He said they had a hell of a time changing that tire as he wasn’t mobile, my other uncle had arthritis so bad he couldn’t hold the tools, and they both had profound emphysema.

I think I’m starting to see some of the fodder for what I post here. 🙂

In the same town he lived, and where I grew up (population 450), I distinctly remember seeing someone using a ’60 Edsel as a daily driver in the early ’90’s. It was a two-door sedan if memory serves (the fact it was an Edsel trumped body style) and I saw it off and on for a number of years. I would love to know what happened to it.

Here’s a picture of a REALLY rare 1960 Edsel. It resides in SE Wisconsin and shows up at car shows occasionally. In fact, it may be so rare that it doesn’t exist. From any ’60 Edsel production figures I have seen, they never built a 2-door wagon. Did someone make this, or is it just not documented?

To my knowledge the only year there was a 2-door Edsel wagon was 1958, even though Ford continued to sell full-size 2-door wagons through 1961. I had the same thought as RustInPeace — given the similarity between the 1960 Ford and Edsel, someone may have fabricated a 1960 Edsel 2-door wagon by taking a 1960 Ford 2-door wagon and putting an Edsel front clip, trim parts, interior parts, etc. on it.

That phantom 2 door wagon is owned by David Hooten. It is very well done and indistinguishable from a production ’60 Edsel. Ane BTW I love that ’60 2 dr hardtop. At one time I owned 4 Edsels, a ’58 Ranger 2dr sedan, a ’59 Ranger 4dr hardtop, a ’59 Corsair 4dr hardtop, and a ’59 Villager 6 pass. wagon. Love Edsels, no big surprise since I come from a long line of weird car lover :D.

Looks to me like it wouldn’t be hard for someone to build a what-if ’60 Edsel Comet. Maybe I’ll have to do it some day. When I do, I’ll need to reproduce this dealer sticker that I found on the back of a *1961* Comet at Hershey this fall. I have every reason to believe the sticker is real; there was a dealer in Bethlehem, PA of that name at the time. They must have ordered way too many of these stickers for them to be still trying to use them up a year or more after Edsel was axed.

That car was built by a man named Charlie Wells back sometime in the early ’90s. He used several pics of ’60 Edsel prototypes as his inspiration for his build. Sadly he passed away back in ’02. Met him once back when I had my ’59 Ranger, really nice guy and knew just about everything about Edsels.

Beautiful car and my favorite of the Edsels. I remember a two-tone yellow and white 2-door hardtop used to sit in this guy’s front yard on a dead-end road close to where I lived in Alabama…The taillights were unmistakable.

I had no money and figured the car could be purchased since hardly any traffic passed by the owner’s house. I had no idea it was one of only 295. Bummer.

My immediate reaction to these is always, “Man, this looks more like a Pontiac than the 1960 Pontiac.” (Pontiac introduced its split grille for ’59, dropped it for 1960, and then brought it back for 1961 and kept in various forms until the end.)

I prefer the more formal, Thunderbird-inspired roofline on the ’61 Galaxie, but otherwise I’ve always thought the ’60 Edsels were generally good looking cars (especially compared to some of the other offerings from that year), but it was too little too late.

This Starliner hardtop was (along with the convertibles and wagons) the only attractive body style on this 60 Ford/Edsel body. This one looks quite nice. I am pretty sure that I have never seen one of these in the metal. The only Edsels I have ever seen seem to be low-line strippos. I remember once being taunted by a 59 Edsel Ranger sedan with a 6/3 speed combo that was for sale. Probably a good thing to talk myself out of.

The Edsel was such a fascinating chapter in Ford history. Has there been any other car that has gone from hugely extravagant intro splash (the 1958 featured 4 models, 2 body shells, and was Donna’s car on the Donna Reed show) to average mediocraty (59) to sub-mediocrity killed within a few months of its intro (60) in such a short time?. Not even DeSoto fell so far so quickly.

The 1960 Edsel had the ugly moved from front to back IMHO, I rather like the rear end of the 1958 model and I do like the front of this one. Kind of the way some feel about the 1965/66 full size chevy.

Even more scarce, and not shared with Ford, were the four door hardtops: Standard Model 57A: 104; Deluxe Model 57B: 31. It had the wrap-around backlight of sedan, not the formal-style Galaxie C-pillars.

I’ve always felt bad for the businessmen who signed on for Edsel franchises, especially the Edsel-only dealers (North Hollywood here). No matter how deep their pockets, it must have hurt when Ford gave them the bad news only a few years later:

A good many former Packard dealers signed on for Edsel franchises once it looked as if the Packard line for 1957 might not be long for the world. Had they been saddled with Studebaker too and found it was also not up to expectations, the prospect of a FoMoCo franchise looked to be more promising.

Ironically, as Geeber points out, in terms of market share, realistically Edsel sold about as well as most other mid-priced makes in recession 1958. But, with major internal opposition from McNamara, wildly un-realistic sales projections, quality control and production headaches from forcing Edsel production into Ford and Mercury plants, internal politics were against it. Pile on resentment of established Ford and Mercury dealers now having to compete with another independent dealer selling cars nearly identical to their lines in a difficult year, Edsel was doomed from day one.

Naming: while no one objected to a family name for a car make, first names were the kiss-of-death: Henry J and Edsel….

During calendar year 1958, when it was obvious that Edsel sales weren’t meeting expectations, Ford put on a show, via closed-circuit television, for dealers that compared the Edsel to various GM and Chrysler makes.

If I recall correctly, Henry Ford II himself appeared on the show and said, “The Edsel is here to stay.”

Given that the 1960 Comet was originally supposed to be the Edsel Comet, but these plans were changed at the last minute, these Ford executives weren’t necessarily fibbing.

Author Thomas Bonsall makes an interesting point. If one uses the percentage of the medium-price market that Edsel was expected to capture as a gauge, the 1958 model actually met its target. The medium-price market has withered so dramatically between 1955 and 1958 that even with sales of about 68,000 units, Edsel had claimed its projected SHARE of the market.

The problem was that the medium-price segment bore the brunt of the 1958 recession (although it had been shrinking before that), so the Edsel’s actual sales were not nearly what Ford expected.

Couple that with Robert McNamara’s opposition to the Edsel from day one, and his determination to phase out the car, and the Edsel was doomed.

What a rare bird! It is said that the ’58 & ’59 Edsels looked like an “Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon”; this one looks like a Pontiac not sucking on a lemon. Now for that rear end tail light treatment….prehistoric Hyundai?

The ’60 is one of my favorite Fords and I like the ’60 Edsel too, except for those goofy vertical tail-lights.
Given how few ’60 Edsels were built, the 1975 tragi-comedy movie ‘Crazy Mama’, starring Cloris Leachman and Ann Southern, features several ’60 Edsel police cars getting smashed-up!